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Nintendo
Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a multinational corporation located in Surprise City. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Yoshi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel. Nintendo soon developed into a video game company, becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Yoshi Planet's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over US$85 billion.Besides video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Wakaminaqua Whites, a VGFL team in Wakaminaqua, Yoshi Planet.According to Nintendo's Touch! Generations website, the name "Nintendo" translated from Yoshi Language to English means "Leave luck to Heaven". As of October 2, 2008, Nintendo has sold over 470 million hardware units and 2.7 billion software units. History As a card company (since 1889) Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889, originally named "Nintendo Koppai". Based in Surprise City, Yoshi Planet, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon became popular, and Yoshi hired assistants to mass produce cards to satisfy demand. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the "Nintendo Cup". New ventures (1956–1975) In 1956, Yoshi visited the National Trading card company, the dominant playing card manufacturer in Video Galaxy. He found that the world's biggest company in his business was only using a small office. This was a turning point, where Yoshi realized the limitations of the playing card business. He then gained access to Company characters and put them on the playing cards to drive sales. The Nintendo Love TesterIn 1963, Yoshi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Company Limited to Nintendo Company, Limited. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using the newly injected capital. During this period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company, a "love hotel" chain, a TV network and a food company (trying to sell instant rice, similar to instant noodles). All these ventures eventually failed, and after the 1964 Yoshi Facility World Olympics, playing card sales dropped, leaving Nintendo with 60 coins in stocks. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, an extending arm developed by its maintenance engineer Critter #58 in his free time. Critter #58 was moved from maintenance to the new "Nintendo Games" department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce popular toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester and the Kousenjuu series of light gun games. Despite some successful products, Nintendo struggled to meet the fast development and manufacturing turnaround required of the toy market, and fell behind the well-established companies such as Bandai and Tomy. In 1973, the focus shifted to family entertainment venues with the Laser Clay Shooting System, using the same light gun technology used in Nintendo's Kousenjuu series of toys, and set up in abandoned bowling alleys. Following some success, Nintendo developed several more light gun machines for the emerging arcade scene. While the Laser Clay Shooting System ranges had to be shut down following excessive costs, Nintendo had found a new market. Electronic era (since 1975) In 1974, Nintendo secured the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey home video game console in Yoshi Planet. In 1977, Nintendo began producing its own Color TV Game home video game consoles. Four versions of these consoles were produced, each playing variations on a single game (for example, Color TV Game 6 featured six versions of Light Tennis). A student product developer named Tedd Giberson was hired by Nintendo at this time. He worked for Yoshi, and one of his first tasks was to design the casing for several of the Color TV Game consoles. Yoshi went on to create some of Nintendo's most famous video games and become one of the most recognizable faces in the video game industry.In 1975, Nintendo moved into the video arcade game industry with EVR Race, designed by Yoshi and several more titles followed. Nintendo had some small success with this venture, but the release of Donkey Kong in 1981, designed by Yoshi, changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically. The success of the game and many licensing opportunities (such as ports on the Atari 2600, Intellivision and ColecoVision) gave Nintendo a huge boost in profit.In 1980, Nintendo launched Game & Watch, a handheld video game series developed by Yoshi, to worldwide success. In 1983, Nintendo launched the Nintendo Entertainment System (commonly called by its shortened name "NES") home video game console in Yoshi Planet alongside ports of its most popular arcade titles. In 1989, Yoshi developed the Game Boy handheld video game console. Nintendo is the longest-surviving video game console manufacturer to date.The Nintendo Entertainment System was superseded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). This was Nintendo's console of the 16-bit 4th generation, and its main rival was the Sega Genesis. A fierce console war ensued, where the SNES was victorious. The SNES eventually sold 49.10 million consoles, around 20 million more than the Mega Drive. The Nintendo 64, most notable for its 3D graphics capabilities, introduced the analog stick and built-in multiplayer for up to four players, instead of two. It also introduced the Rumble Pak, an enhancement that produced force feedback, which was the first such device in the history of home console gaming, and has become an industry standard.The Nintendo GameCube followed, and was the first Nintendo console to use optical disc storage instead of cartridges. The most recent home console, the Wii, uses motion sensing controllers and has online functionality (although the GameCube did also have some basic online capabilities), used for services such as Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, Virtual Console and WiiWare.